At the January 5, 2026 Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology (LSBC) meeting, Chairman Jennifer Cobb Reed prepares to introduce a non-agenda item to begin requiring full-blown licensure for hair braiding in Louisiana with said license requiring 600 hours (it’s presently 500) to expand Federal funding for braiding instruction.
Today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature focuses on three (3) key topics from the last meeting of the LSBC of Monday, January 5, 2026:
#1:
Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns remains to this day fuming mad at the “demonstrably false” statements made during the 2025 Regular Legislative Session regarding the financial standing of the LSBC.
Accordingly, Burns has made it crystal clear that, going forward, the Members of the Board and anybody affiliated with the Board (Executive Director, attorney, etc.) better have their acts together and be knowledgeable about that subject matter. Doing so should avoid a repeat of this May 14, 2025 Senate Commerce Committee debacle wherein LSBC folk could not even respond to the most basic questions about the Board’s financial condition.
Therefore, when Burns addressed the Board at that January 5, 2026 meeting, he wanted to ensure there is no excuse for having a repeat of that May 14, 2025 debacle nor the subsequent Legislative testimony in which “demonstrably false” testimony was given by multiple then-on-staff representatives of the LSBC. Here’s video of him driving that point home:
1/5/26: Burns drives home the point that any Board Member or anyone in any way associated with the LSBC will be held accountable for the kind of “demonstrably false” statements made about the LSBC’s financial position should a repeat of any such false statements be made at future Legislative testimony.
In the video above, Burns made it clear that, at the point of every meeting going forward, the financial statements of the Board will be made public via publication on this blog. We are doing so via a table on which we will continue to make entries for each future meeting. Here is that table, which will routinely be published going forward:
| Date of LSBC Statements | Summation: UNRESTRICTED Cash & Income (Loss) Since FYE |
|---|---|
| August 25, 2025 (Income Statement); September 30, 2025 (Balance Sheet). | $61,000 net income; $1.275 million cash on hand. |
| December 30, 2025 (both balance sheet and income statement) | ($87,000) net loss; $1.291 million cash on hand. |
#2:
Burns next made clear the fact that, not surprisingly, after Vietnamese manicurists got so frustrated with the Board that they filed a Writ of Mandamus against the individual Board Members, suddenly Attorney General Liz Murrill stated to the LSBC that she would not be issuing an opinion on the Board’s authority to issue a Declaratory Order of the nature the manicurists seek.
The fact that Murrill would not be issuing any such opinion was something that Burns made clear he’d stated numerous times both on this blog and stating so publicly to the Board during public comment at previous meetings.
Being blunt, we believe that Murrill and the Board were in collusion to simply drag the matter out by seeking the opinion in the first place!
Let us not forget that on January 6, 2025, Board Attorney Sheri Morris indicated the Opinion would be forthcoming by the next meeting.
In our opinion, the fact that statement was even uttered and is now proven to also obviously be “demonstrably false,” combined with the fact that common sense dictates that someone in the AG Office told Morris that, provides compelling evidence to us that the Board and the AG Office were in cahoots to simply drag this matter out as long as possible.
The proverbial “gig was up” once the Plaintiffs got so frustrated that they ended up needing to file a Writ of Mandamus to force the LSBC to adhere to its legal (and we believe moral) obligation to have done back in September of 2024 when the Declaratory Order was first sought by the manicurists.
Here’s video of Burns stressing those points along with subsequent discussion of the Declaratory Order matter:
1/5/26: Burns expresses his sentiments about the LSBC dragging out for 16 months a Declaratory Order sought by Vietnamese manicurists along with subsequent discussion of the matter by the LSBC.
#3:
Last, but certainly not least, the LSBC Chairman Jennifer Cobb Reed introduced yet another non-agenda item (she’s making a habit of that practice just as she deployed the same inappropriate mechanism for the hiring of Erin Marceaux not long back) which would call for requiring 600 hours for what would be a future license for hair braiding rather than the existing 500 hours for an “alternative hair permit.” The discussion makes it crystal clear that the purpose of the planned change is to facilitate Federal funding for hair braiding instruction:
1/5/26: LSBC discusses expanding the number of hours to obtain the authority to perform hair braiding activities in Louisiana from 500 to 600 and to transition from an “alternative hair permit” to full-blown hair braiding licensure.
We are going to wrap this feature up by providing this link for the January 5, 2026 meeting of the LSBC in its entirety and emphasizing that relatively new Executive Director Erin Marceaux elaborates upon a number of changes with LSBC inspectors.
Since the time of that last meeting, we have been made aware of an entire plethora of alleged illegalities transpiring throughout the LSBC’s operations.
In fairness to Marceaux, however, and also especially since there is an ongoing Legislative Auditor Office Performance Audit which may well expose those alleged illegalities, we are intentionally refraining from making any reference to those allegations on this feature, nor will we make public comment on them at the upcoming February 2, 2026 meeting.
Nevertheless, we’ve been informed that Marceaux is keenly aware of those allegations, and we want to afford her the opportunity to initiate corrective action prior to us beginning our diligent investigative process which may ultimately result in us making such allegations of illegal acts very public.